All posts tagged Celebrating African American Hair Picture Books

You might recognize Furqan from our Multicultural Children’s Book Day poster! Robert Liu-Trujillo created the artwork for our event. When Rob gave us sketches for the poster, we didn’t know the boy in the flat top was a character in his book; he just appealed to us and we picked him right away!

I’m thrilled to be introducing Rob’s book, Furqan’s First Flat Top, today and we are giving away an inscribed copy too (see below)!

Valarie and I are passionate about the need for more multicultural, diverse, and inclusive books for kids. Today, I wanted to examine this from the perspective of When Whiteness is The Standard of Beauty. Lisa Wade, professor at Occidental College, notes:

One manifestation of white supremacy is the use of whiteness as the standard of beauty. When whiteness is considered superior, white people are considered more attractive by definition and, insofar as the appearance of people of other races deviates from that standard, they are considered ugly.

Non-white people are still allowed to be considered beautiful, of course, as long as they look like white people.

This is a no win standard for women of color, but then think about how this affects girls of color and their self esteem? Read more…